When the underlying voice media of a Contact Center is VoIP, and an agent is to be operating from a remote location such as their home, it is still a requirement that the voice quality of the remote agent be comparable to a local agent in the center. With VoIP technology, this voice quality requires a data network to the remote location that has a managed Quality of Service (QoS) so that parameters such as latency and packet loss are low enough that the contact perceives the remote agent as being in the local Contact Center. Broadband data network connections to the residence or small outlying offices that can provide high QoS are not available at affordable prices and the necessary commercial data circuits that can provide QoS management typically are prohibitively expensive for a single or low number of uses.
Referring now to FIG. 1, in existing Contact Centers 15, it is necessary to allow agents to have remote access to the Contact Center 15 in the event that the agent needs to connect remotely. One such instance may be when the agent's office building is closed due to a bomb threat, bad weather or to support a work at home day. Remote agent access may also be desired when an agent is traveling, when an agent can not get into the office due to transportation problems, needs to be home with a sick child or when the agent's office building is closed due to a natural disaster. It could also be used to bring a few extra agents into service during peak Contact Center activity times.
The two most common prior art solutions for providing remote agent access to a Contact Center 15 are depicted in FIG. 1. The first includes a Remote Terminal 40 connected to the Wide Area Network (WAN) or Local Area Network (LAN) 25 of the Contact Center 15 through a frame relay connection with a committed minimum information rate (CIR) 45. Such a CIR connection 45 is available through public telephone companies. This “data line” approach provides an effective equivalent to a private communication line from the Remote Terminal 40 direct to the Contact Center 15, but is lower in cost because it need only connect to the carrier's nearest point of presence, as for both the “company” and the “remote access” end. When many companies share the carrier's backbone, this can allow remote networks to be built for less than dedicated circuits. Because the backbone is shared, the circuit ensures a minimum bandwidth will exist to support the application. The CIR 45, therefore, is not affected by large amounts of traffic as Internet solutions are, as the CIR 45 is a private “data line” from the Contact Center 15 to the Remote Terminal 40. However, such a “data line” solution is quite expensive, costing hundreds to over a thousand dollars a month.
Other architectures include a Remote Terminal 30 having Virtual Private Network (VPN) software installed so that the Remote Terminal 30 can be connected through the Internet 35, and to a VPN Device 20 in the Contact Center 15. Such a solution is inexpensive, as a high speed DSL or Cable connection typically cost about fifty dollars a month. However, because the Internet 35 is affected by variable bandwidth usage caused by high traffic, data packets containing the voice component may be delayed or even lost from the Remote Terminal 30 to the Contact Center 15. A DSL or Cable bandwidth is usually in the range of 100 kB or more, while encapsulated VoIP data can be up to 100 kb in size. However, there are often brief pauses in this available bandwidth that a typical user does not notice when looking at web pages or transferring files, but it would be very noticeable if the pauses interrupted speech each time it happened. This low voice quality is unacceptable as it may frustrate the customer as well as severely lower the efficiency of the remote agent.
What is needed is a remote agent access solution that includes the high QoS found in the Contact Center 15 with a reliable, fast and inexpensive high speed connection.